The Covax facility, an initiative of the WHO and the Vaccine Alliance, aims to overcome this time lag and equitably distribute Covid-19 vaccines across the world. In Africa it has now started vaccination programs in Ghana and the Ivory Coast and is said to have 600 million doses promised for the continent’s citizens.

So, where do we currently stand in terms of air service activity in Africa.

Well, looking at capacity data for the first two months of 2021 versus the same period last year we see some strong recovery in domestic markets, although there remains notable variation. Tanzania has a similar domestic capacity offering to the same period last year, while in Algeria and Kenya levels are down less than -10%. The average for the Continent sees domestic capacity down almost two fifths, with the majority of the largest markets performing below this average.

It is a very different story when it comes to international schedules with capacity down more than half year-on-year across the first two months of the year.

Again, there is notable variation among countries. Looking at the ten largest international markets in Africa across the first two months of 2019 we find that three now have an offering above half the levels of last year: Ethiopia, Nigeria and Tanzania. At the other end of the scale, Algeria and Mauritius had not recovered 10% of international capacity over the comparable periods. With the exception of the loss of the link from the mainland to St Helena, these were the worst performing international markets across all of Africa.